What you describe, is what co-pilot already does most of the time. The examples where people can show it reproducing snippits of code are more the exception

What you describe, is what co-pilot already does most of the time. The examples where people can show it reproducing snippits of code are more the exception than the rule. And they are usually done by people who are trying to manuliption into proving that it can reproduce copyrighted code. Some people tend to think of it as a search engine. Looking though it's database for relevant snippets for the current situation and regurgitating them unmodified. But that's really not what it's doing. It's more like the AI autocomplete on your phone, but for code. It might not be able to understand the algorithms. But it seems to be able to adapt simple algorithms that it's seen multiple times in it's training data to match the surrounding code (in style, naming conventions, and actually using the variable/functions you already have). I don't have number, but from my experience, I would say it generates uniqu(ish) non-copyrighted code at least 95% of the time. The only question is what to do about the other times when it does occasionally output potentially copyright infringing code, either by accident, or when it's forced.